Pelaxed and Bonn Hotel Bombing: Difference between pages

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In economics, ''pelaxed'' or ''pelaxation'' is a situation in which the [[Human Development Index]] of a nation is very high or increasing, while the economic growth rate slows and the GPD per capita remains at a medium/developed level. It presents a social dilemma for economic policy, since actions intended to increase the growth rate may decrease the IHDI.
The Bonn Hotel Bombing was a terror attack committed on June 23rd, 1956, by a radical Gaelic supremacist cell of the GaelWind political party in [[Faneria]]. It left several dozen dead and over a hundred injured, and instigated a large number of police raids and trials of known and suspected members of the political party GaelWind.  


The term, a portmanteau of stagnation and [[Pelaxia]], is generally attributed to economist Per Denti, a [[Pelaxian Democratic Party]] politician who became Finance Minister in 1970. Denti used the word in a 1965 speech to The Regia during the height of the Pelaxian Welfare State system and increasing rate of inflation and stagnation. Warning the House of Commons of the gravity of the situation.
{{Infobox civil conflict
| title            = Bonn Hotel Bombing
| subtitle        =
| partof          = [[Lean Years (Faneria)]]
| image            =
| caption          =
| date            = June 23rd-24th, 1956
| place            = [[Sethsport]], [[Faneria]]
| coordinates      =
| causes          =
| goals            = Political Terrorism, Ethnic Supremacy
| methods          = Terror Attacks, Arrests, Executions
| status          =
| result          = GaelWind political party banned, mass arrests and crackdown, counterterror operations reform in Faneria
| side1            = [[GaelWind]]
| side2            = {{flagicon|Faneria}}[[Faneria|Fhainnin Government]], Frederick Bonn
| side3            = Civilians
| side4            =
| leadfigures1    =
| leadfigures2    =
| leadfigures3    =
| leadfigures4    =
| howmany1        = 11 (plus 30+ support personnel)
| howmany2        = 824 (Police, Special Forces)
| howmany3        = 1600+
| howmany4        =
| casualties1      =
*23 dead (8 initially, 3 manhunts, 12 executions)
*264 arrested
*64 incarcerated
| casualties2      = *4 (initially)
*1 (manhunts)
| casualties3      = *73 dead
*120 wounded
| casualties4      =
| fatalities      =
| injuries        =
| arrests          =
| damage          =
| buildings        = Bonn Hotel (partially)
| detentions      =
| charged          = 297
| fined            =
| effect          =
| effect_label    =
| casualties_label =
| notes            =
| sidebox          =
}}


The term has been reinvigorated in the last two decades following the Pelaxian Revolution and its transition into a market socialist economy to refer to the current economic situation of the Federal Republic of Pelaxia, which currently maintains a very high HDI, while also having one of the lowest GPDPC in the developed world.
==Background==
Neoliberal economists argue that the current size of the Pelaxian state and the disruptions to the economy created by the Meireles policies after the 1996 crash have hampered down private entrepreneurship and capital investment back into the economy. Neo-marxist economists argue that the GPD per capita isn’t really an economic statistic that should reflect a nation’s wealth, while we should also take into consideration its wealth distribution and the HDI. Furthermore, some neo-Keynesian economists will argue that the Pelaxed term is just an unfair reflection of the overall average GPD per capita of the world being just extravagantly high from the 1950s onward, while also being a logical result from the 1996 asset bubble.


=Causes=
The attack targeted the Hotel Bonn, a prominent business owned and run by a mixed Yonderine-Gothic immigrant family situated in the port city of Sethsport. Sethsport hosts a relatively large foreign population, including a large [[Aenglish people|Aenglo]] minority and several [[Coscivian]] and [[Gothic]] communities, as well as numerous localities with Gaelic subcultural elements. Hotel Bonn was a notable tourist destination made in traditional Yonderine fashion on the city's popular tourist area on the southern bank of the Deir River, and holds a prominent and visible spot for several miles from the north bank as well as a notable portion of the south bank due to the relatively few stories of the buildings immediately surrounding it (the average being 2-3 stories and the Hotel featuring eight floors).
Economists offer two principal explanations for why stagflation occurs. First, the stagnation showed in Pelaxia can result when the economy faces a supply shock, such as a rapid increase in the price of oil. An unfavourable situation like that tends to raise prices at the same time as it slows economic growth by making production more costly and less profitable.


Second, the government can cause income stagnation and depression if it creates policies that may create a stock market crisis. These two things would probably have to occur simultaneously because policies that slow economic growth do not usually cause inflation, and policies that cause inflation do not usually slow economic growth.
The modern incarnation of GaelWind was originally a fringe political party called the Steel Stars formed after the end of the [[Second Great War]], focusing on renewing claims to the former _____ and _____ regions in Fiannria as well as numerous minor revanchist claims across several other nations. The Steel Stars were a veterans' group originally, and made ties with several other similarly-minded organizations, including tacit ties to the more mainstream group GaelWind - a much older pan-Gaelic nationalist group that had fizzled out of popularity after Faneria's Central Republican Party formally adopted pan-Gaelicism as a platform element and absorbed most of its membership in 1924. Over the course of the late '40s and early '50s, the party was increasingly overtaken by Gaelic supremacists as the revanchists splintered off into the Starkist faction of the Republican Party, eventually leading to the Steel Stars merging with GaelWind, the Old Falcons, the New Ordered Faneria Society, and several other groups of varying repute to maintain a sense of coherency. GaelWind was easily the oldest of these, and the Stars adopted the name, forcing out the remnants of the original GaelWind leadership and undergoing an internal power struggle that saw the party council taken over by militant, virulent ethnic supremacists. After losing one of the its three seats in the national legislature (and keeping the remaining two partly through intimidation tactics), the party was in danger of losing its status as a recognized political party and coming under increasing surveillance by state security agencies.


==Supply Shock==
An individual cell based in Srathlann planned and supplied the attack independently of the central GWP office, intending to use the attack as cover for the killing of the Bonn family, who were large figures in the city's immigrant community and thus prominent members of the immigrant community on the national level; in addition, the attack was intended to discourage foreign immigration and tourism and to terrorize the non-Gaelic community in Sethsport and surrounding Srathlann. This was not in and of itself unusual, as GaelWind members frequently harassed and assaulted lone Aenglos and others on the infrequent occasions they had the opportunity, but the relative smallness of GaelWind meant they could not effectively cow most minority communities, even in smaller cities. Furthermore, an uptick in gun ownership and a steady increase in policing effectiveness had made random violence far less safe to conduct and get away with than in the chaotic 1940s, whereas the Hotel Bonn had a strict no-weapons policy as a result of drug smuggling issues during the [[Second Great War]]. National intelligence circles were aware of the increasing militancy of GaelWind, but were both hesitant to rough up a formally recognized, albeit not well-respected, political party and unable to justify more than supporting police against individual actors.
[[File:Cars waiting for gas in 1974.jpg|thumb|Cars waiting for gas in Albalitor in 1971|296x296px]]


See also: [[Western Imperium]]
Due to poor communication and planning, as well as the personalities of the involved actors, the Southern Sethsport GaelWind cell organized a team of three operatives and an extraction team of two more, which ballooned to a team of eighteen personnel which rapidly lost cohesion and began planning operations independently. Two additional persons planned to join of their own accord but did not show up on the night of the attack; one changed his mind, and the other was hit and hospitalized when he ran a red light en route.
[[Continental Obligations]]


After the Second Great War Pelaxia’s [[Continental Obligations]] had shifted towards [[Aciria]], who became a strategic economic partner in regards to fossil fuels. Aciria's ability to claim imperium came with the defeat of [[Caphiria]] during the [[Second Great War]], a defeat that the [[Levantia and Odoneru Treaty Association]] (LOTA) carefully crafted within the media as a primarily Acirian effort despite the plurality of resources coming from [[Levantia]]. Having defeated Caphiria allowed Aciria to credibly claim its mantle of imperium, a mantle recognized by the other LOTA-aligned nations on [[Sarpedon]], [[Pelaxia]], [[Cartadania]], and [[Volonia]]. Aciria accepted its first Continental Obligation from Volonia on March 18, 1944, a date which is generally accepted as the beginning of the [[Western Imperium]].  
==Attack==
Local police were alerted several days prior to the attack by the Counterterrorism Division of the national government, and planned along with GERB resources to raid the cell's headquarters and prevent the attack the day prior. The raid went off perfectly, with seven armed insurgents and another sixteen accomplices being quietly apprehended at 8:10 PM on the night of the 23rd. One of the prisoners revealed the existence of another group of three men who had been absent at the time of the raid, and police were sent to the Hotel Bonn to intercept them, successfully doing so. The scene was cleared by 11:21; six officers remained on site at the Hotel. Believing the threat to have been cleared, the Counterterrorism Management Officer present, ________, stood down the fourty-eight GERB operatives brought in to handle the situation.


Its status continued until 1970, when both Pelaxia and Volonia switched their recognition back to Caphiria and established the Continental Diplomatic Arrangement Organization, departing LOTA. That resulted in Aciria cutting production of oil and placing an embargo on oil exports to Pelaxia.
At 11:54, an hour and twenty-four minutes after the intended time of the attack, an independently operating group of nine GaelWind members entered the Hotel from a side entrance, moving through the building's east wing and planting explosives in several empty rooms. The Hotel only a token security staff, making infiltration easier as the group killed several staff members quietly and cut the local landline. The broken landline was noticed immediately, and the manager on shift, 54 year-old co-owner Frederick Bonn, went to investigate the lines outside for damage at 11:59, initially suspecting a tree he had neglected to cut had fallen.


==Asset Bubble and Crash of 1996==
The team of GW paramilitaries entered part of the main floor's extended, winding lobby space at 12:02 on the 24th, firing several rounds in the air and screaming at people to get on their stomachs in Fhasen. The police stationed outside responded immediately, but two were killed by gunfire from the paramilitaries immediately and the others took positions near the entrance. Two of the terrorists repulsed them with a fragmentation grenade, killing one more and wounding two of the remaining officers as the others began firing on panicking guests and visitors, many of whom were tourists who did not speak Fhasen fluently and could not understand the commands given to them. This caused chaos, and rounds hit several compliant hostages, leading several to try and rush to safety or to batter the terrorists. One terrorist suffered a concussion and another was grazed by a pistol round during a scuffle in which several hostages were killed attempting to take their weapons. Afterwards, two men went to 'clear' the west wing, while two others continued attempting to wire support columns with small explosive charges beginning in the east wing floor level.
[[File:84f5a6f9-1483-41e4-b9c2-41b8f7245fc1 16-9-aspect-ratio default 0.jpg|thumb|El Periódico reporting on the aftermath of the stock market crash|382x382px]]
Pelaxia’s economic growth in the second half of the 20th century ended abruptly at the end of the 1990s. In the late 1990s, abnormalities within the Pelaxian economic system had fueled a speculative asset price bubble of a massive scale. The bubble was caused by the excessive loan growth quotas dictated on the banks by Pelaxia's central bank, the Bank of Pelaxia, through a policy mechanism known as the "window guidance".


Trying to deflate speculation and keep inflation in check, the Bank of Pelaxia sharply raised inter-bank lending rates in late 1996. This sharp policy caused the bursting of the bubble, and the Pelaxian stock market crashed. Equity and asset prices fell, leaving overly-leveraged Pelaxian banks and insurance companies with books full of bad debt. The financial institutions were bailed out through capital infusions from the government, loans and cheap credit from the central bank, and the ability to postpone the recognition of losses, ultimately turning them into zombie banks.  
The Sethsport PD was immediately made aware of the attack by radio, and scrambled all available units in the northern half of the city starting at 12:03, with the GERB unit present being alerted and scrambling at 12:05. The Sethsport Naval Garrison was alerted at 12:10 and dispatched an active patrol boat to the shoreline near the Hotel.


Eventually, many of these failing firms became unsustainable, and a wave of consolidation took place, resulting in four national banks in Pelaxia. Many Pelaxian firms were burdened with heavy debts, and it became very difficult to obtain credit. Many borrowers turned to loan sharks for loans.
At 12:09, the terrorists herded several hostages into a corner of the lobby, their exfiltration plan being completely ruined by the rapid reaction of police. One terrorist attempted to leave the building through a back entrance and was tackled by the hotel manager, who successfully beat him unconscious prior to police arrival and took one of the terrorists' weapons, entering the building and engaging the remaining GaelWind members at 12:18. By 12:20 AM, the building was quarantined, with an increasingly large number of police attempting to restrain and contain the fleeing people cramming the local streets, most of whom were unaware of the reason behind the panic but were swept away by the crowd. Police confirmed a large number of people escaping the building through fire escapes and alternative exits. This foot and vehicle traffic restricted PD and GERB access to the site considerably, and one team of twelve GERB operatives flagged down the Navy patrol boat a half-mile down the river with a flare and boarded at 12:24.
===Economic Effects===
[[File:Panorámica-750x500.jpg|thumb|Urban slam in post industrial sector of Albalitor|381x381px]]


Despite mild economic recovery in the 2000s, conspicuous consumption of the 1980s has not returned to the same pre-crash levels. Pelaxian firms such as Saddlebred, Leopardo, Trotter, [[MILCAR]] and PELMAR which had dominated their respective industries from the 1960s to the 1990s, had to fend off strong competition from rival firms based in other Sarpedonian countries, particularly Cartadania, and Aciria, since the 2000s. In 1989, of the world's top 50 companies by market capitalization, 10 were Pelaxian; by 2018, only one such company remains in the top 50. Many Pelaxian companies replaced a large part of their workforce with temporary workers, who had little job security and fewer benefits. As of 2009, these non-traditional employees made up more than a third of the labor force. For the wider Pelaxian workforce, wages have stagnated. From their peak in 1990, real wages have since fallen around 33%, an unprecedented number among developed nations.
At some point in the intervening time, Frederick Bonn began to direct evacuation efforts and encountered two members of the strike team, who were attempting to clear floors and hunt down people who had not yet fled, and ambushed them in a hallway in the west wing. He successfully injured one and killed the other, but was hit twice in the chest and crawled into a room where he bled out over several minutes. Simultaneously, the twelve GERB officers who had flagged the patrol boat clambered ashore via an old rowboat dock at the waterline and ascended the steps along the bank. After tying the previously battered and unconscious attacker's hands and feet, they breached the building at 12:42.


Surveys by the Ministry of Labour showed that household income in 2010 had fallen to 1987 levels, while, the aggregate sales of all companies in Pelaxia decreased by 3.9% in 2010 compared to 2000, or a decrease of 13,848.2 billion yen.The wider economy of Pelaxia is still recovering from the impact of the 1996 crash and subsequent lost decades. It took 19 years for Pelaxia's GDP to recover to the same levels as 1996. And as a greater sign of economic malaise, Pelaxia also fell behind in output per capita.
A short gunfight ensued, with the GERB troops killing all but one of the terrorists in the lobby at no loss to themselves. The explosives were set off by one of the terrorists in the east wing as they heard the fighting but failed to sufficiently damage the reinforced pillars, and the two attempted to flee but were shot when they tried to do so by cutting through part of the second floor of the lobby, which briefly brought them in sight of the rapidly advancing state security team due to the two-story lobby layout. The GERB team had been clearing the second floor and nearly missed the fleeing terrorists, but caught them as they attempted to exit on the ground level and fired down at them. One was killed and the other wounded; the wounded one was shot again by one of the GERB agents at range and expired. GERB cleared the building, taking the two injured and one uninjured captives into custody and sending the all-clear at 8:48 AM after the other teams arrived and conducted a full search of the premises. The site remained locked down with a presence of at least a dozen officers through to the end of the year before reconstruction was permitted.


===Social Effects===
==Aftermath==
While economic commentators tend to see stagnation as a negative phenomenon, qualitative studies conducted in Pelaxia show the opposite. There was a measurable increase in life satisfaction during the past three decades. Conversely, during the period of rapid growth in asset prices, no evidence of increased well-being was found in relation to that growth. This is partly due to the asset bubble being a driver for economic inequality, whereas the decades following the bubble's collapse have seen more economic equality and increased social spending by the government and left leaning policies such as the reorganization of the economy into a predominantly cooperative economic model.
The lessons from Pelaxia align with concepts such as degrowth or qualitative metrics like GNH, which suggest that economic growth is not necessarily an appropriate metric for measuring the success and wellbeing of a society.


[[Category:Countries]]
====At Home====
[[Category:Pelaxia]]
The attack prompted an immediate crackdown by the _____ administration, which ordered a raid on the GaelWind Peoples' Headquarters in [[Teindún]] in which a large number of incriminating files were seized and several prominent members, including both the party's sitting representatives in the [[Joint Councils]] and the party president, were arrested. A state of martial law was maintained in Sethsport until the 26th, and the operatives of the government organization GERB launched a series of successive raids on known Gaelwind offices and members' homes, capturing upwards of six thousand weapons mostly of civilian make and use. In most cases the weapons were returned after their owners were cleared of involvement, though many of those people ended up on watchlists. In one instance, a GERB officer was killed, prompting a gunfight which saw three additional casualties accounted for as being due to paranoid gun nuts.
[[Category:Economy]]
 
Public outcry was immense, and both state and private papers ran stories railing against GaelWind and calling for its dissolution as a legal party in Fhainnin politics shortly after the attack. On July 29th, the Joint Councils passed an act by a 86% margin to raise the bar for official party membership from 1% to 2.5% of the popular vote, effectively blocking the party from officially holding any seats outside of a coalition. This also made it considerably easier to prosecute GaelWind members and seize legal documents from their offices, as it removed some of the protections of the [[1952 Political Persecution Prevention Act]] afforded to recognized parties. The nay votes were largely from independents and fringe parties seeking to maintain their own statuses rather than out of support for GaelWind, but these votes still would become a contentious topic.
 
Frederick Bonn was posthumously awarded a Civil Defense Medal along with two of the hostages who attempted to resist their killers; the GERB agent who executed one injured GaelWind member was formally reprimanded but not otherwise disciplined. The Bonn family was reimbursed for reconstruction as well as a seventy-five thousand Barra tax-free payout and the median estimate for lost revenue. After the attack, the immigrant community in Sethsport banded together and paid for many of the funerals required, with the remainder being partially reimbursed by the Fhainnin government in spite of its not being required to to so for foreign citizens, as many of the wounded and dead had been tourists.
 
Court cases went on for up to three years after the attack, with every survivor of the terror team that actually reached the Hotel being given the death penalty. The planners and members who had intended to take part but had been intercepted. including the hospitalized gunman who had been hit while driving to the meetup, were imprisoned for terms of fifty years to life depending on involvement. Several of these persons were later convicted of other crimes that had been known by the GWP central office, including politically motivated killings, which resulted in several more death sentences through 1975.
 
====International Response====
 
==Impact==
 
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Faneria]]
[[Category:GaelWind]]
[[Category:Crime]]

Revision as of 14:53, 1 December 2022

The Bonn Hotel Bombing was a terror attack committed on June 23rd, 1956, by a radical Gaelic supremacist cell of the GaelWind political party in Faneria. It left several dozen dead and over a hundred injured, and instigated a large number of police raids and trials of known and suspected members of the political party GaelWind.

Bonn Hotel Bombing
Part of Lean Years (Faneria)
DateJune 23rd-24th, 1956
Location
GoalsPolitical Terrorism, Ethnic Supremacy
MethodsTerror Attacks, Arrests, Executions
Resulted inGaelWind political party banned, mass arrests and crackdown, counterterror operations reform in Faneria
Parties to the civil conflict
FaneriaFhainnin Government, Frederick Bonn
Civilians
Number
11 (plus 30+ support personnel)
824 (Police, Special Forces)
1600+
Casualties and losses
  • 23 dead (8 initially, 3 manhunts, 12 executions)
  • 264 arrested
  • 64 incarcerated
  • 4 (initially)
  • 1 (manhunts)
  • 73 dead
  • 120 wounded
Casualties
Buildings destroyedBonn Hotel (partially)
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Background

The attack targeted the Hotel Bonn, a prominent business owned and run by a mixed Yonderine-Gothic immigrant family situated in the port city of Sethsport. Sethsport hosts a relatively large foreign population, including a large Aenglo minority and several Coscivian and Gothic communities, as well as numerous localities with Gaelic subcultural elements. Hotel Bonn was a notable tourist destination made in traditional Yonderine fashion on the city's popular tourist area on the southern bank of the Deir River, and holds a prominent and visible spot for several miles from the north bank as well as a notable portion of the south bank due to the relatively few stories of the buildings immediately surrounding it (the average being 2-3 stories and the Hotel featuring eight floors).

The modern incarnation of GaelWind was originally a fringe political party called the Steel Stars formed after the end of the Second Great War, focusing on renewing claims to the former _____ and _____ regions in Fiannria as well as numerous minor revanchist claims across several other nations. The Steel Stars were a veterans' group originally, and made ties with several other similarly-minded organizations, including tacit ties to the more mainstream group GaelWind - a much older pan-Gaelic nationalist group that had fizzled out of popularity after Faneria's Central Republican Party formally adopted pan-Gaelicism as a platform element and absorbed most of its membership in 1924. Over the course of the late '40s and early '50s, the party was increasingly overtaken by Gaelic supremacists as the revanchists splintered off into the Starkist faction of the Republican Party, eventually leading to the Steel Stars merging with GaelWind, the Old Falcons, the New Ordered Faneria Society, and several other groups of varying repute to maintain a sense of coherency. GaelWind was easily the oldest of these, and the Stars adopted the name, forcing out the remnants of the original GaelWind leadership and undergoing an internal power struggle that saw the party council taken over by militant, virulent ethnic supremacists. After losing one of the its three seats in the national legislature (and keeping the remaining two partly through intimidation tactics), the party was in danger of losing its status as a recognized political party and coming under increasing surveillance by state security agencies.

An individual cell based in Srathlann planned and supplied the attack independently of the central GWP office, intending to use the attack as cover for the killing of the Bonn family, who were large figures in the city's immigrant community and thus prominent members of the immigrant community on the national level; in addition, the attack was intended to discourage foreign immigration and tourism and to terrorize the non-Gaelic community in Sethsport and surrounding Srathlann. This was not in and of itself unusual, as GaelWind members frequently harassed and assaulted lone Aenglos and others on the infrequent occasions they had the opportunity, but the relative smallness of GaelWind meant they could not effectively cow most minority communities, even in smaller cities. Furthermore, an uptick in gun ownership and a steady increase in policing effectiveness had made random violence far less safe to conduct and get away with than in the chaotic 1940s, whereas the Hotel Bonn had a strict no-weapons policy as a result of drug smuggling issues during the Second Great War. National intelligence circles were aware of the increasing militancy of GaelWind, but were both hesitant to rough up a formally recognized, albeit not well-respected, political party and unable to justify more than supporting police against individual actors.

Due to poor communication and planning, as well as the personalities of the involved actors, the Southern Sethsport GaelWind cell organized a team of three operatives and an extraction team of two more, which ballooned to a team of eighteen personnel which rapidly lost cohesion and began planning operations independently. Two additional persons planned to join of their own accord but did not show up on the night of the attack; one changed his mind, and the other was hit and hospitalized when he ran a red light en route.

Attack

Local police were alerted several days prior to the attack by the Counterterrorism Division of the national government, and planned along with GERB resources to raid the cell's headquarters and prevent the attack the day prior. The raid went off perfectly, with seven armed insurgents and another sixteen accomplices being quietly apprehended at 8:10 PM on the night of the 23rd. One of the prisoners revealed the existence of another group of three men who had been absent at the time of the raid, and police were sent to the Hotel Bonn to intercept them, successfully doing so. The scene was cleared by 11:21; six officers remained on site at the Hotel. Believing the threat to have been cleared, the Counterterrorism Management Officer present, ________, stood down the fourty-eight GERB operatives brought in to handle the situation.

At 11:54, an hour and twenty-four minutes after the intended time of the attack, an independently operating group of nine GaelWind members entered the Hotel from a side entrance, moving through the building's east wing and planting explosives in several empty rooms. The Hotel only a token security staff, making infiltration easier as the group killed several staff members quietly and cut the local landline. The broken landline was noticed immediately, and the manager on shift, 54 year-old co-owner Frederick Bonn, went to investigate the lines outside for damage at 11:59, initially suspecting a tree he had neglected to cut had fallen.

The team of GW paramilitaries entered part of the main floor's extended, winding lobby space at 12:02 on the 24th, firing several rounds in the air and screaming at people to get on their stomachs in Fhasen. The police stationed outside responded immediately, but two were killed by gunfire from the paramilitaries immediately and the others took positions near the entrance. Two of the terrorists repulsed them with a fragmentation grenade, killing one more and wounding two of the remaining officers as the others began firing on panicking guests and visitors, many of whom were tourists who did not speak Fhasen fluently and could not understand the commands given to them. This caused chaos, and rounds hit several compliant hostages, leading several to try and rush to safety or to batter the terrorists. One terrorist suffered a concussion and another was grazed by a pistol round during a scuffle in which several hostages were killed attempting to take their weapons. Afterwards, two men went to 'clear' the west wing, while two others continued attempting to wire support columns with small explosive charges beginning in the east wing floor level.

The Sethsport PD was immediately made aware of the attack by radio, and scrambled all available units in the northern half of the city starting at 12:03, with the GERB unit present being alerted and scrambling at 12:05. The Sethsport Naval Garrison was alerted at 12:10 and dispatched an active patrol boat to the shoreline near the Hotel.

At 12:09, the terrorists herded several hostages into a corner of the lobby, their exfiltration plan being completely ruined by the rapid reaction of police. One terrorist attempted to leave the building through a back entrance and was tackled by the hotel manager, who successfully beat him unconscious prior to police arrival and took one of the terrorists' weapons, entering the building and engaging the remaining GaelWind members at 12:18. By 12:20 AM, the building was quarantined, with an increasingly large number of police attempting to restrain and contain the fleeing people cramming the local streets, most of whom were unaware of the reason behind the panic but were swept away by the crowd. Police confirmed a large number of people escaping the building through fire escapes and alternative exits. This foot and vehicle traffic restricted PD and GERB access to the site considerably, and one team of twelve GERB operatives flagged down the Navy patrol boat a half-mile down the river with a flare and boarded at 12:24.

At some point in the intervening time, Frederick Bonn began to direct evacuation efforts and encountered two members of the strike team, who were attempting to clear floors and hunt down people who had not yet fled, and ambushed them in a hallway in the west wing. He successfully injured one and killed the other, but was hit twice in the chest and crawled into a room where he bled out over several minutes. Simultaneously, the twelve GERB officers who had flagged the patrol boat clambered ashore via an old rowboat dock at the waterline and ascended the steps along the bank. After tying the previously battered and unconscious attacker's hands and feet, they breached the building at 12:42.

A short gunfight ensued, with the GERB troops killing all but one of the terrorists in the lobby at no loss to themselves. The explosives were set off by one of the terrorists in the east wing as they heard the fighting but failed to sufficiently damage the reinforced pillars, and the two attempted to flee but were shot when they tried to do so by cutting through part of the second floor of the lobby, which briefly brought them in sight of the rapidly advancing state security team due to the two-story lobby layout. The GERB team had been clearing the second floor and nearly missed the fleeing terrorists, but caught them as they attempted to exit on the ground level and fired down at them. One was killed and the other wounded; the wounded one was shot again by one of the GERB agents at range and expired. GERB cleared the building, taking the two injured and one uninjured captives into custody and sending the all-clear at 8:48 AM after the other teams arrived and conducted a full search of the premises. The site remained locked down with a presence of at least a dozen officers through to the end of the year before reconstruction was permitted.

Aftermath

At Home

The attack prompted an immediate crackdown by the _____ administration, which ordered a raid on the GaelWind Peoples' Headquarters in Teindún in which a large number of incriminating files were seized and several prominent members, including both the party's sitting representatives in the Joint Councils and the party president, were arrested. A state of martial law was maintained in Sethsport until the 26th, and the operatives of the government organization GERB launched a series of successive raids on known Gaelwind offices and members' homes, capturing upwards of six thousand weapons mostly of civilian make and use. In most cases the weapons were returned after their owners were cleared of involvement, though many of those people ended up on watchlists. In one instance, a GERB officer was killed, prompting a gunfight which saw three additional casualties accounted for as being due to paranoid gun nuts.

Public outcry was immense, and both state and private papers ran stories railing against GaelWind and calling for its dissolution as a legal party in Fhainnin politics shortly after the attack. On July 29th, the Joint Councils passed an act by a 86% margin to raise the bar for official party membership from 1% to 2.5% of the popular vote, effectively blocking the party from officially holding any seats outside of a coalition. This also made it considerably easier to prosecute GaelWind members and seize legal documents from their offices, as it removed some of the protections of the 1952 Political Persecution Prevention Act afforded to recognized parties. The nay votes were largely from independents and fringe parties seeking to maintain their own statuses rather than out of support for GaelWind, but these votes still would become a contentious topic.

Frederick Bonn was posthumously awarded a Civil Defense Medal along with two of the hostages who attempted to resist their killers; the GERB agent who executed one injured GaelWind member was formally reprimanded but not otherwise disciplined. The Bonn family was reimbursed for reconstruction as well as a seventy-five thousand Barra tax-free payout and the median estimate for lost revenue. After the attack, the immigrant community in Sethsport banded together and paid for many of the funerals required, with the remainder being partially reimbursed by the Fhainnin government in spite of its not being required to to so for foreign citizens, as many of the wounded and dead had been tourists.

Court cases went on for up to three years after the attack, with every survivor of the terror team that actually reached the Hotel being given the death penalty. The planners and members who had intended to take part but had been intercepted. including the hospitalized gunman who had been hit while driving to the meetup, were imprisoned for terms of fifty years to life depending on involvement. Several of these persons were later convicted of other crimes that had been known by the GWP central office, including politically motivated killings, which resulted in several more death sentences through 1975.

International Response

Impact